Shoot Breathtaking Photos with your iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

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After watching the unveiling of iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus a few months ago, we all knew immediately why we wanted it, the new dual camera setup. We all saw the beautiful portrait-style photos with the dreamy bokeh, the true-blue optical zoom and all of the other cool new features we know we can’t live without.

But how do you actually use all of these features? We’re going to take you through them and after that, we expect only the most beautiful, rich photos from every iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus user out there, understood?

Photo by Rick Joaquim on an iPhone 7. Photo by Pieter Kleynhans on an iPhone 7 Plus.

The New Portrait Mode

This mode basically turns your iPhone 7 Plus into a DSLR-style camera, complete with crisp foreground subjects and dreamily blurred backgrounds (known as “bokeh”). Once you launch the camera, the portrait mode will be available and your iPhone will show you a live preview of the depth effect.To get the best results, try shooting in bright light. It’s also a good idea to put as much distance as possible between your subject and the background. If your subject is standing too close to a wall, for example, the effect won’t have as much depth, and it won’t ‘pop’ the way you want it to.

The Optical Zoom

What makes the iPhone 7 Plus’ dual camera setup so impressive, is that the 56mm lens allows for seamless optical zoom. This means you now have a 2x seamless optical zoom, which can be extended to 10x using the digital zoom.

The difference between optical zoom and digital zoom is that digital zoom isn’t actually “zooming.” Digital zoom creates the illusion of zoom by isolating and blowing up pixels. Optical zoom is true zoom that doesn’t rely on blowing up pixels which compromises image quality.

The Second Lens

While many will use the new 56mm lens to zoom in on a subject, some see it as new way of thinking about photography. Coming close to the popular 50mm portrait lenses on more traditional cameras, the iPhone 7’s 56mm lens should be used natively, instead of relying solely on the traditional 28mm lens. This forces you to move around your subject to find new angles and take new types of pictures. It’s also an excellent portrait lens. You can stand further away from your subject to capture an awesome portrait shot without the distortions that the 28mm lens usually produces.

RAW Photos

A lot of photographers prefer RAW photos because they essentially retain a lot more tonality and colour information than standard JPEGs or other compressed files. The bad part about them, however, is that they’re generally pretty massive and take up a lot of storage. However, with RAW photos, you can export them into your favourite photo editing software, and render print-quality photos.

Shooting in Low Light

We’ve all taken photos while we’re out at a party or a bar, and all you want is a clear shot taken in a poorly lit setting. This has always been a struggle. Until now. With iPhone 7 Plus, you can play with the camera’s exposure slider to make your images darker. The iPhone handles black tones nicely, helping you capture those more intimate moments.

Never Delete a Photo Again

Today, with digital photography, we’re rather trigger-happy, taking too many pictures and deleting too many of them. There are a lot of options for photographers to safeguard all of their images. One option is the new 256GB version of the iPhone 7 Plus. You can also take advantage of Apple's iCloud Photo Library, with 200GB of storage available. And then there is also the option to use Google Photos to save all of your images, and it’s free when you upload compressed versions of your image.

Now that we’ve given you the rundown on how your new iPhone 7 Plus’ camera works, the job is up to you to take the most incredible photos and create the most crisp memories to cherish for a life time.